ArbitraryValue

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ArbitraryValue ,

My theory is that psychosis due to self-imposed sleep deprivation causes some of the crazier things Elon Musk does.

ArbitraryValue ,

Not the same thing, but I still have my old Voodoo 2 3D-accelerator card (not the same thing as a video card back then).

ArbitraryValue ,

When I bought my Windows 11 laptop a month ago, I was able to set up a local account after turning on airplane mode. (I had entered my wifi password in an earlier step since I thought it was just for installing updates.)

Robot cars can be crashed with tinfoil and painted cardboard ( www.theregister.com )

A team of researchers from prominent universities – including SUNY Buffalo, Iowa State, UNC Charlotte, and Purdue – were able to turn an autonomous vehicle (AV) operated on the open sourced Apollo driving platform from Chinese web giant Baidu into a deadly weapon by tricking its multi-sensor fusion system, and suggest the...

ArbitraryValue ,

People seem to hold computers to a higher standard than other people when performing the same task.

ArbitraryValue ,

That's just from the debris of all the drones they shot down, duh.

(Sarcasm, just in case.)

ArbitraryValue ,

Chance is an illusion. You cannot escape your fate.

ArbitraryValue ,

Sometimes when I open my mouth really wide, I somehow spray a little stream of saliva, like from a squirt gun. It makes me feel like the dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park, but so far I haven't been able to do it on purpose.

ArbitraryValue ,

Their problem:

So apparently NetHack has a mechanic that slightly changes how the game plays every time it's full moon according to your system clock

The model wasn't trained on a full moon. They had a system to set up the environment for replicable results but it didn't include modifying the system time.

It reminds me of another bug with the system time, which a friend of mine encountered. He was working on hardware and he was getting a lot of units that worked fine at the factory, immediately failed at the client's location, and then worked again when they were returned to the factory. It turned out that when these machines were turned on, their embedded OS automatically queried some server to update the current time. The client's internet connection had such high latency that the server's response only came back after the machine was already in use. This generated a huge delta-t value that triggered the sanity checks and shut the machine down. The factory had a much lower-latency connection and so the race condition could never be replicated there.

As for the weirdest bug I ever encountered myself: a compiler generating bad machine code. I have often said that the worst part of programming is that the computer always does exactly what you tell it to, but that was the one and only time in twenty years that the computer actually didn't.

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

I think Gaston would have been a good main character for a hypothetical Beauty and the Beast sequel (or a good D&D PC). He's the inverse of the standard hero - rather than starting out weak but pure of heart, he starts out strong, clever, brave, and charismatic, but also a rotten person. However, he just crossed several lines in a row (literally stabbing someone in the back is pretty bad even by his own standards), nearly died (Disney characters routinely survive falling off of cliffs), and can't go home to a town where everyone knows he's a villain. Can he turn his life around after hitting rock bottom (both literally and figuratively)?

I'd play him as a paladin, for that strength/charisma combination. Maybe he was saved through divine intervention? That could be enough to make him change his ways. A combat-oriented bard might work too; he does sing...

ArbitraryValue ,

When I was in California, I saw perfectly peeled lemons lying under a friend's lemon tree. He told me the rats did it - they ate the peel but were very careful not to bite into the sour inside.

ArbitraryValue ,

Maybe this is a dumb question, but why would Ukraine target a minesweeper?

ArbitraryValue ,

Deadpool. He's not funny, he's just obnoxious.

ArbitraryValue ,

Are you claiming that Batman wears spandex because originally he was supposed to be naked but the CCA wouldn't allow that?

First case of highly pathogenic avian influenza transmitted from cow to human confirmed ( www.sciencedaily.com )

In March a farm worker who reported no contact with sick or dead birds, but who was in contact with dairy cattle, began showing symptoms in the eye and samples were collected by the regional health department to test for potential influenza A. Experts have now confirmed the first case of highly pathogenic avian influenza...

ArbitraryValue ,

The NEJM published this on May 3 - I'm surprised that I'm only hearing about it now.

ArbitraryValue ,

over 2/3 being civilians by their own count

People often bring this up without noting that such a ratio would not be unusual in urban warfare against a well-prepared enemy even when the attacking army is doing what it reasonably can to reduce civilian casualties. Compare it to Mariupol, an example of what happens of the attacking army is unconcerned about civilian casualties: 25/26 of Ukrainians killed were civilians according to Ukrainian estimates. (8/9 were civilians if we use the Ukrainian numbers for how many of their soldiers were killed but the more conservative Human Rights Watch numbers for civilian deaths.)

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

If you trust the casualty numbers that the UN Is using, then they imply approximately 3.7 civilians killed for every combatant (with the assumptions that children make up half the population and that children are never combatants). I don't trust those numbers but I admit that if I did, I would think they didn't look good for Israel. I suppose we'll have a better idea of what the truth is years from now when historians reach a consensus, but until then I'm going to reluctantly trust Biden's judgement because the US government probably has secret information unavailable to the public. (Biden is biased by his need to be re-elected, but I don't get reports from the CIA so that's the best I can do.)

As for justification: Israel should make reasonable efforts to minimize civilian casualties while accomplishing its legitimate military objectives, but Israel should not sacrifice its ability to accomplish those objectives in order to protect civilians. In other words, Hamas doesn't get to hold Palestinian civilians as hostages against Israel. If they try, then they are to blame for the resulting civilian casualties. The alternative is simply unworkable in practice, because the ability of Hamas to put Palestinian civilians at risk is almost total.

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

If you present me with a trolley problem in which the only way to destroy Hamas also kills a million children, I won't know what the right answer is. I suppose it would depend on what would happen to Israel if Hamas wasn't destroyed.

However, the moral calculus for nations is not the same as it is for individuals. The standard established the last time the Western world fought a war it took seriously does seem to be "as many as it takes" and I suspect that this would still be the standard if such a war happened again. (All those nuclear missiles we have ready aren't precise weapons...) In that context, demanding that Israel should show restraint that other countries haven't and wouldn't seems like hypocrisy.

ArbitraryValue ,

It's easy to act self-righteous when that has no consequences, but in practice most people on this planet live in countries (including democratic countries) that probably would actually kill the children in an analogous scenario.

ArbitraryValue ,

Before anyone gets too excited: some of their electrodes are no longer able to record a signal from the patient's brain. They're reprogramming their software to work with fewer electrodes. No one is being turned into a borg drone.

Will I ever be seen as truly British?

My family immigrated to the UK from Poland when I was six. I'm 20 now, speak much better English than Polish and feel like this is my land/culture. However I have a Polish first and last name, Polish passport and "unique" accent everyone picks up on, so despite this I'm usually perceived as an outsider. It makes me really sad...

ArbitraryValue ,

I know the feeling. I've been in the USA for decades, almost my entire life, but as soon as I say anything, everyone can immediately hear that I'm not American. People who ask me about it are well-meaning and curious. I still don't like it, but I try not to show it.

ArbitraryValue ,

You can state what you don't want, but no one will be paying attention. Except maybe the LLM reading your posts...

ArbitraryValue ,

I suspect it isn't even illegal, but I'm not an expert.

ArbitraryValue ,

Nice restaurant food, but I guess that doesn't count.

Lychees. The funny thing is that I can afford lychees, but I always think "Why buy them when these perfectly good grapes cost three times less?"

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

There's not going to be a moment when the world suddenly goes from having oil to having no oil. Some oil reserves are relatively cheap and easy to extract. Other, very large reserves are currently so difficult and expensive to extract that doing so isn't profitable. As the easy oil gradually runs out, the supply drops, the price rises, and sources of oil that were not profitable at the old price become profitable. This maintains the supply of oil and stabilizes the price.

Eventually oil will become so expensive that alternative technologies will be cheaper than it. This will happen with plenty of hard-to-reach oil left. So it's true that the amount of oil is in principle finite, but that limitation isn't really relevant.

[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?

Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don't come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don't really get upset by it...

ArbitraryValue ,

Why is my brain like this? Why do I always do things the hard way?

"Oh, there's this thing you have to do that'll take fifteen minutes. "

"I'll do it tomorrow."

"Oh, there's this thing you've been putting off for a few days. The deadline for it is coming up."

"I'll do it right before it's due."

"Oh, there's this thing that's past due, but it might not be too late..."

"I can't handle this. I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist."

"Oh, the thing that would have taken 15 minutes is now a major disaster that'll take days to fix and cost a lot of money. Your life is falling apart as we speak."

"I'll handle it now, since I have no choice."

ArbitraryValue ,

Uh, how common do you think mail-order brides are?

ArbitraryValue ,

It's funny because endocrine-disputing chemicals dumped by humans really are messing frogs up quite badly, but now you can't bring it up without people getting the wrong idea about your political views...

ArbitraryValue ,

It sounds like it's worse for Turkey than for Israel.

ArbitraryValue ,

If I recall correctly, when trade is considered to be zero-sum, the net exporter gains and the net importer loses. Therefore if what's bad for Israel is what's good for Turkey and vice versa, this is worse for Turkey.

Maybe I'm wrong - I wasn't very good at macroeconomics.

ArbitraryValue ,

Well this one is easy, just ask them "is my butt big?"

ArbitraryValue ,

How could you say something like that!? You don't care about me at all!

ArbitraryValue ,

One bad quarter and they're doing this? I don't even.

ArbitraryValue ,

They're not actually sexy women with wings and little horns; that's just the form they usually use when someone summons them deliberately because it's the form most summoners want to see. They're malevolent, shape-shifting extra-dimensional entities, they're adept at emotional manipulation, they want to drain away a mortal's soul through physical contact, and they prefer having that contact given willingly. (Maybe the soul is more useful to them like that, or maybe it just tastes better.)

They don't need to seduce you. Maybe being a mercenary has severed your bonds to your family and your community? Maybe you've seen things that you wish you hadn't? Mommy understands. Mommy will make you all better. Give Mommy a hug...

ArbitraryValue ,

Places with traditions of mummification have dry climates in which bodies may mummify naturally, so it's not something the people just came up with out of nowhere.

ArbitraryValue ,

Well, technically all goblins have backstories. Most of them just don't have backstories that involve getting proficiency in dex saves.

ArbitraryValue ,

One thing I love about art deco is that it is not self-conscious. That's how you can get stuff like this:

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/585de7b3-6af3-4977-9edc-aef4c68ef43b.png

(A beard to impress any dwarf! Also, when I first saw it I thought he was zapping the viewer with two lightning bolts but he's actually holding a compass.)

ArbitraryValue ,

IMO this is one of those things that the player should be told to roll a relatively easy Knowledge check for first, unless it's being presented as a new development in-universe (and then the DM should probably have engineered a less lethal way to introduce it). Wizard schools presumably hand out "creatures not to nuke" lists to their students...

ArbitraryValue ,

That's not a similar act at all. Assassinating one of the leaders of Iran's nuclear weapons program isn't like blowing up a bunch of random people at a march.

ArbitraryValue ,

I am a very large snake and this is my dream home.

Seriously though, that isn't just someone's easement? How did it even end up as a separate lot?

ArbitraryValue ,
  1. git pull
  2. git reset --hard HEAD
  3. try not to cry
  4. cry a lot
ArbitraryValue ,

Once when I was still a kid, I told a woman I loved her so much that I could only love her more if she was a robot.

She did not think that was romantic.

ArbitraryValue ,

Nobody is forcing him to be a member of the profession – to paraphrase one of his tweets that was complained about “You’re free to leave [the profession] at any point.”

Jordan Peterson really is free to leave the profession - he doesn't need the money. Meanwhile a psychologist who isn't independently wealthy can't express controversial opinions without risking his livelihood. I don't think "only the rich can exercise freedom of speech" is good policy.

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